Musings on Kindness for the New Year - by Saga

It is New Year's Day and I guess that means we're all supposed to be thinking profound thoughts about beginnings, endings, our lives over the past decade, who and what we resolve to be in the future -- all that.  Which I am doing, having profound thoughts, that is.  Unorganized, swirling, profound thoughts that are not yet willing to be put into coherent language on this blog. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

I am thinking a lot about kindness these days, and about how to be effective when I am no longer able to walk much or stand up very long or get myself across town -- all of which are necessary for marching and rallying and being visible with demands for justice.  I can write emails and letters and make phone calls to those congressional representatives who really don't represent me much, so at least there is that. Where was I?  Oh yes, kindness.

I have been given stories in the last few days about kindness, generosity of spirit, helpfulness. They are healing stories for me -- antidotes to the general hatefulness, violence, corruption, and what-the-hell-happened-to-this-democracy-ness of it all.  Social media even has felt antisocial, loaded with bad news stories about everything from relentless antisemitism to the dire consequences from eating tomatoes.

And then I see my neighbors who have moved to our city temporarily to care for a mother with dementia.  They've been here a year and it could be much longer. These folks had full lives in Wisconsin, then opened their home to both of her parents and cared for them full-time for years.  Only those who have done in-home dementia care can know what full time means. It's relentless and it drains caregivers physically, emotionally, mentally. It took me a full two years to recover and I wasn't doing in-home care.  So, here are these fine folks caring for the last living parent, his mother. In a small home with a cranky woman. Cranky might be a euphemism. They are far from their community and their own lives. They are inspiring in their determination to let her die at home, as she wishes. It's a tough sort of kindness. Tough to do and requiring toughness.

I meet with a man who comes to give us a cost estimate for replacing a huge window (long story of condo repairs). Somehow we fall into conversation about Indiana and how he found his biological family there. When official records were closed to him, kind people stepped in and found the answers in two days. An acquaintance's neighbor who "finds people - a tough guy", a librarian, a records clerk who bent the rules, all stepping up to give this man some peace of mind. Strangers, they were, who led him through a series of synchronicities to the joy of  a reunion with his old/new family.

I see long distance and via social media that is actually sociable, how a woman whose eldest child died of cancer is loved and cared for by her sister singers in a community chorus. That chorus saw me through tragedies, but there is no nightmare worse than a dying child. I light the candle, pray for her, send healing magic as I can from too far away. Kindness will get her through, I am sure, but it won't be easy and it will take a very long time. We all hold her.

In inconsequential domestic news: We've been displaced (far too dramatic a word for it) while the external walls of our condo are repaired -- water and termite damage that the HOA board failed to repair in 2015. A few new board members and, lo and behold, our pleas and demands were finally heard. Action happened. I am struck by what a difference one leader can make. Yeah, well, we have daily reminders of that in the antisocial social media, eh?  Where was I?  Oh yes, kindness...

So with the walls demolished from the inside and the outside protected by plastic sheeting and sandbags, we could have attempted to live in two rooms for a couple of months. Or longer. But there is my asthma...  Leadership and kindness prevailed (as well as the HOA finances, if I'm honest), and we are ensconced in a formerly-empty and fairly shabby apartment adjacent to the property manager's office. We are safe and warm, we have all we need and even the dog enjoys the courtyard. There is a majestic heritage oak right outside our door. The property manager and two handymen have made it all doable. We may be back home by the end of March, but it's looking iffy, what with engineer's reports, and permits, and bids, and weather, and...  I'm rambling.

A dear friend said to me in the midst of the chaos, "It's a good thing you are spiritually advanced." Which made me laugh for a long time. When I could stop laughing, I thought about what a gift to the word her recovery is. And how one woman's courage to heal changes everyone around her. And then, of course, I thought of the serenity prayer:

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  

Sometimes the only thing I know to do that might change the things I can control, is just simple kindness.

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